Rep. Gosar Passes Amendment Stopping "Obama's Assault on the Suburbs"

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, U.S. Congressman Paul A. Gosar, D.D.S. (AZ-04) released the following statement after the House of Representatives successfully approved his amendment prohibiting HUD from implementing its proposed Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule. The amendment was successfully attached to the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2015:

“American citizens should be free to choose where they would like to live and not be subject to neighborhood engineering and gerrymandering at the behest of an overreaching federal government. Local zoning decisions should be made by local communities, not bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.

“If allowed, this new rule by the Administration would result in increased local taxes, depressed property values and cause further harm to impoverished communities that are in dire need of community development block grants.

“The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is attempting to create a thinly veiled set of rules and regulations which forces communities to conform to the utopian dreams of an ideological administration or face losing out on billions of dollars in grant money.”

Americans for Limited Government had this to say about the Gosar Amendment:

“We call on every member of the House to support Rep. Gosar’s amendment to defund HUD’s scheme to redraw zoning maps in any locality that accepts any part of the $3.5 billion a year in community development block grants from the federal government. The utopian goal of creating evenly distributed neighborhoods based on racial composition and income is bad policy, and it is unconstitutional.

“HUD has no place in local zoning decisions. Under federalism, that is left up to states, counties and municipalities to determine for themselves. At a time when the Supreme Court is roundly rejecting racial quotas as unconstitutional, there is no place for wasting taxpayer dollars on social engineering that will never withstand judicial scrutiny.

“Housing discrimination based on race has been illegal since the 1960s, and people should be allowed to choose for themselves where they live without D.C. bureaucrats nationalizing zoning decisions for political reasons.

Rep. Gosar deserves the thanks of all Americans for his courage in taking on this backdoor attempt to federalize our most basic living decisions. Americans for Limited Government strongly supports the Gosar amendment to defund racial quotas in local zoning decisions.”